Today, everything from cell phones to LED lighting depends on the weird behavior described by quantum mechanics. But will this strange physics soon bring us computers millions of times faster than your laptop, or instant communication across the universe? And is the difference between life and death just a matter of quantum mechanics?

Today, everything from cell phones to LED lighting depends on the weird behavior described by quantum mechanics. But will this strange physics soon bring us computers millions of times faster than your laptop, or instant communication across the universe? And is the difference between life and death just a matter of quantum mechanics?

Are the Salad Days for Intelligence Still to Come?Could it be that Homo sapiens is the first intelligent species in the cosmos? Given the number of planets now known to pepper space, that seems unlikely. Seth Shostak writes about the idea for NBC’s tech/science page.